


We Protect Our Own

by hollow_echos



Category: Alex Rider - Anthony Horowitz
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-24
Updated: 2013-12-24
Packaged: 2018-01-05 23:27:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1099811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hollow_echos/pseuds/hollow_echos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alex comes back from a mission-gone-awry. K-Unit steps in to pick up the pieces.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Protect Our Own

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ang_the_adverse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ang_the_adverse/gifts).



He was a cub, a school boy. He shouldn’t be down here in the ant’s nest of a hideout held by the terrorist organization of the week. Wolf knew this, and for what was probably the hundredth time since he had started out on this mission, he cursed M16 for ever having gotten a kid involved in this mess.

 

He raised his hand into the air, making a gesture that his unit mates would see with their infrared goggles in this dank, dark tunnel. A figure came around the corner in front of them. Wolf could read the surprise in his reaction, the sudden stiffening of limbs like a deer in the headlights.  Fox darted ahead of him, reacting to the new threat. A momentary scuffle followed before the figure fell to the ground. Fox went ahead to recon the approaching tunnel.

 

As Wolf stepped over the still form on the ground, he saw the slight rise and fall of the man’s chest. Still alive, then, to fight another day. Wolf wasn’t sure the man deserved that much, but their instructions were clear. This was rescue mission, get in, get out, and avoid engaging the enemy as much as possible. There would be other days and other battlefields to fight upon; this was not one of them. There were more important matters at hand.

 

According to the man they had abducted from an outpost watch tower along the edge of the compound, they should be close. If the man’s tongue had spoken the truth (and he very much imagined it to be the case, most men lost their courage when staring into the barrel of a gun), it should be right ahead. One more turn, two more guards to put down, and they were standing in front of a cell door. For all the make-shift installations they had seen thus far – hand dug tunnels, some of which were supported by sticks he wouldn’t have trusted even half his weight to, the door was levels above such shoddy work. Sure, the wrought iron door had peeling paint in some places and rust creeping in around the edges, but a door didn’t have to look pretty. In this case, it just had to keep a prisoner inside.

 

Wolf put a fist up in the air, motioning the others to halt. Putting an ear to the door, he listened. There were voices coming from the other side, more than one. This put a kink in things. Unsure of what sort of ensemble they faced on the other side of this door, as the team leader on this mission, he decided to err on the side of caution.

 

As he pulled a stun grenade from his belt and ripped out the pin, without prompting Fox lifted the bar from across the door and pulled it open. This was how a well-oiled machine, how a well-tuned unit functioned, as a single entity, one member anticipating the movements of the next.

 

Wolf made the throw and then turned his back to the impending carnage. He felt the concussive blast, his ear drums felt like they were rippling inside his head. Even with eyes closed and ducked low to the ground, the flash of light still turned everything a blinding white behind his eye lids. He counted several beats for the dots to quit sparking across his vision before advancing.

 

A stun grenade, in closed quarters and in close proximity, should render anyone in the immediate vicinity incapacitated for at least a few minutes. Wolf didn’t wait that long, he stepped over the first moaning body and surveyed the room.  There were vague movements across the dirt floor as the room’s occupants struggled to regain their bearings. It gave the ground a strange sense of motion, as if the moving bodies were an undulating mass. He didn’t seek to pick apart that moving mass; he had eyes for only one figure. Not a man dressed in rags, like the one he had just stepped over, but a child, a school boy, who had no business buried in some god forsaken prison under tons and tons of rock and dirt.

 

It wasn’t a large room, but it was made to seem even smaller by the number of people crammed inside. Eagle and Snake were rolling bodies over with their feet, looking for the one person they had been sent to find.

 

It was Wolf who found him. The Cub’s hands were shacked in front of him with a set of steel cuffs that looked like they had walked straight out of history. The boy didn’t move, but the chain between the cuffs was pulled tight across the throat of the man lying on top of him who was clawing at his throat in a vain attempt to lessen the pressure. There was saliva foaming at the corner of the man’s mouth. Here they had been sent to rescue the Cub, and it seemed they had interrupted the Cub trying to rescue himself. His lip curved into a momentary smirk as he recognized the choke hold as one they had learned together from a martial arts expert during their training.

 

It quickly dipped into a frown when he noticed the boy wasn’t moving. He crossed the distance between them, rendering the struggling man atop the Cub unconscious with a well-placed strike from the butt of his gun. He rolled the man over to the side, watching the Cub take a few unconscious breaths with the sudden lack of the weight.

 

“Eagle, he’s over here. Can you check him over before we move him? I can only assume that we have a few more minutes at most before the ruckus we’ve made gets us noticed,” Wolf barked across the room.

 

His team member nodded in response, quickly abandoning the work he had been doing to move to Wolf and the boy’s side. “No response?” he queried.

 

“None that I can see,” Wolf replied. He had to work to speak in a level tone and keep the concern out of his voice.

 

Eagle did a cursory inspection, running practiced hands up and down each limb looking for injury. Looking up, he spoke to Wolf. “There’s a pretty good knot on the back of his head, some burns and cuts, but nothing that would make it so we can’t move him. He’s stable.”

 

Wolf nodded; he flipped the safety on his weapon to prevent any accidental discharges and picked up the Cub. He was used to doing a rescue carry with a full grown man; not a fucking kid. His was a paltry weight in comparison. He flipped the Cub over in a fireman’s carry and motioned for the rest of the team to clear the room. They had ground to make up in order to make their rendezvous. They carried the Cub out of that hellhole and to safety.

 

****

The Cub looked emaciated. Beneath the harsh fluorescent lights of the hospital room, Wolf could make out a lot of the finer detail that had escaped a cursory inspection in the dim lighting of a cave. He didn’t like what he saw. There were cuts, bruises, and burns, electrical burns. A fifteen year old kid should be playing soccer, not lying here recovering from time spent as a prisoner of enemy combatants.

 

The flash grenade had given him a concussion, the doctors had figured that much out. He needed to be monitored for the head injury, but thus far, he’d remained unconscious, the exhaustion, trauma, or cocktail of the two taking their toll.

 

The monitors surrounding his still form beeped a constant discord in the background. A knock on the doorframe garnered his attention. “Wolf, go home. I got this. You haven’t slept in more than a day.”

 

Wolf opened his mouth to protest, but took in the circles under his unit mate’s eyes. Even battling the day’s events himself, he was still volunteering to stand watch. Wolf figured if Fox looked this bad, he probably looked worse himself. He nodded. “Okay. I’ll go. Thanks.”

 

The conversation was short, clipped. When you lived with and worked with the same team members for as long as they had, they knew one another well, many words weren’t needed.

 

As Wolf crossed through the entryway, Fox grabbed his shoulder, stopping his movements for a moment. “I don’t know what they have the Cub involved with, but it’s things he never should’ve been dragged into. There was a water boarding set up down there in that cell,” Fox offered.

 

Wolf frowned. He’d missed that in the commotion somehow. “I’ll handle it.”

 

****

Handling it meant that his next stop wouldn’t be home. He had one errand to run first. He stopped by the bank. Glancing upwards, he saw that the office lights were on. M16 didn’t sleep. The man he had come to see didn’t sleep much either.

 

Even after confirming his identity, the guards at the back entrance they used after hours didn’t want to let him in, if the matter was non-emergent in nature, it could wait until tomorrow, at least that was what the poor fellow tried to argue. Wolf had dealt with red tape; he knew when he was getting the run around. He also knew how to bulldoze his way straight through instead of weaving through the maze they wanted to lay out in front of him. Him they expected to jump at the drop of a hat, to deploy in the middle of the night with little more information than, ‘They have one of people.’

 

They hadn’t told him it was the Cub until they were in the air. Probably a sound decision, he would’ve eviscerated Blunt. A few minutes later he was riding up the elevator to the man’s office. With a smooth gait honed by years of military drills, he stalked down the hallway and into the man’s office without announcing himself.

 

“Well by all means, lovely to have you drop in for a midnight chat, Wolf,” Blunt greeted him without looking up. With all the technology they had installed in this building, the high-tech sensors and cameras and security measures he probably didn’t even know about, it didn’t surprise him that Blunt knew it was him.

 

“You want to tell me what the hell that mission was?” Wolf growled.

 

Blunt looked up with a bored expression, like he had more productive ways to be spending his time. “A rescue mission. We point you in the direction and say fetch, you retrieve. This really isn’t that difficult, Wolf.”

 

“He’s a kid.”

 

“He’s a remarkable agent and one of the best weapons in our arsenal.”

 

“He’s hurt. He was probably interrogated and tortured from the burns, cuts, and bruises that read like a road map across his body from what the doctors are telling me.”

 

“He’ll heal,” Blunt responded. “They always do.”

 

“We don’t, but then you wouldn’t concern yourself with a small detail like that, now would you? As long as we can stand back up and march back out into those shadow wars you sit up here and plan, it’s alright in your book,” Wolf said.

 

Blunt sighed. “What do you want from me, Wolf? A signed confession?  An apology? You’ll get neither and you know it.”

 

“The Cub comes home with us when he’s discharged by medical.” Because the kid would need time to heal. That part Wolf left out, the statement would be made on deaf ears.

 

Blunt shrugged. “Fine by me. You guys can have Safe House Six.”

 

“And I want to know his name. I can’t keep calling him by a codename forever.”

 

“It’s Alex.”

 

****

Missions left marks. Each member of K-Unit knew it. Between the four of them, they each knew enough medical treatment basics to get by. You get that sort of experience in their line of work. It was a victory each time they came back with the four people they had gone out with. Injuries were part of the gig, when you were the one down; there was no shame in leaning on your pack.

 

They knew this from experience. For a newcomer to their midst, the instinct to hide injury and heal yourself was what came naturally. The Cub was no different.

 

Alex had finally awoken at the hospital and been given leave by the doctors, they released him into the care of K-Unit on the assurance that they would monitor him closely. That entailed poking him every few hours and asking basic questions to make sure the concussion hadn’t flared up any worse. _What’s your name, what’s my name? Where did we meet?_

Most he answered well enough before drifting back off again. It was the second day when he actually woke up properly. Wolf stood over the couch and made sure the kid ate some food. Healing took energy, the body needed nutrition. Alex tried to push the bowl of oatmeal away after a few bites but Wolf made him choke down at least half the bowl before he was satisfied.

 

Depositing the dishes to the sink, he returned to plop down in the armchair and tossed the remote to the kid. “What do you want to watch, cartoons?”

 

The kid sighed. There was a haunted expression in his eyes. “A little old for that, don’t you think? I’d like to go back to bed, really. My head is killing me.”

 

He was fifteen, still a kid by any standards. The sort of ghosts this kid had twisting around in his nightmares belonged to an adult soldier, not a child. “Been there Cub, I know concussions suck. But you’ve gotta stay up. You’ve slept well enough.”

 

“Then let me go home, I can just as easily watch TV from my own couch. May as well get a little time in my own flat before I get shipped off on another mission.”

 

Wolf frowned. “What have they had you doing?”

 

“Top Secret, isn’t it?” the Cub retorted. “I’m sure I’d be breaking one of the Official Secrets Acts or whatever other paperwork they shoved in front of me to sign if I told you.”

 

There was the sound of a door opening and closing. The room was suddenly lit in a glaring brightness. The Cub cried out, burying his head in his arms.

 

“Shit.” Wolf hopped up, pulling for the cord at the lamp and unplugging it, returning the room to the pale glow it had been bathed by just moments ago. Bright lights and concussed individuals didn’t mix very well. He had no doubt the Cub’s migraine was worse.

 

Wolf knelt down next to where Alex had curled into a ball on one end of the couch, breath coming in ragged gasps, arms raised over his eyes. “You okay, Alex?”

 

“What do you think?” he snapped back.

 

At that moment Fox came in with a bag of takeout, a confused expression on his face as he took in the scene. As he eyed the kid on the couch, understanding crept across his face. “Sorry, I thought he was in the bedroom sleeping still or I never would’ve done that. He okay?”

 

Wolf sighed. “Working on figuring that out right now.” He turned to address the Cub again. “What do you need from us?”

 

“For you guys to stop fucking coddling me and leave me alone!”

 

Wolf knew when to press and when to let off. With a tilt of his head he motioned for Fox to follow him out of the room.

 

****

Small details trickled out as Alex tossed and turned in his sleep. While most were incoherent ramblings, there were small kernels to be harvested by listening carefully. It hadn’t been just one mission, like Blunt had told him it was to be back when he agreed to train the kid.

 

Blunt hadn’t been exaggerating when he said he considered Alex a tool. They had taken a sharp, bright, cocky kid he had met during training and whittled him down into a blunt, tired, thing.

 

Alex sat at the kitchen table while Wolf scrambled up some eggs for breakfast. “So what, did Blunt send me here so you can babysit me? Now he doesn’t even trust me on my own, is that what this is?”

 

Wolf sighed. “No, you’re injured. We have the expertise to keep an eye on you and know if you were taking a turn for the worse.”

 

“I don’t believe you,” Alex responded.

 

“You don’t have to. Either way, doesn’t change the fact that you’re stuck with us,” he replied. Patience of a saint, he had to have the patience of a saint to put up with this verbal vitriol. He understood that Alex was a teenager (eons ago he had been in that phase too) and that came with a certain expectation of attitude. There was a reason that the kid had rubbed them the wrong way in training at times.

 

He was dragging them down, that was the commonly held belief during training. Until the Cub had stolen them the book of matches that kept that warm one night. Until Alex had had the gall to kick him out of a plane when he had lost his bearing. The immediate shock and anger had bled away by the time he had free fallen half the distance toward the ground, it was then he realized that Alex had saved his career.

 

Sometimes you needed a kick in the ass, as Wolf had learned. And sometimes you needed someone to pick you up and set you back on your feet.

 

“You still haven’t told me what you were doing in Pakistan.”

 

“Another mission for M16, not like I was given much of a choice,” the Cub shot back.

 

“What do you mean you didn’t have a choice? They can’t kick you out of the back of a Humvee in the middle of the desert and force you to go in. You can say ‘no.’”

 

“When the choice is between having Jack, the woman who’s basically raised me, sent back to America because the government revoked her visa, and one more mission, they may as well have done just that. I stopped pretending I had a choice in this equation a long time ago. At least when I call things as they are I know exactly how things are going to play out.”

 

Wolf sprinkled some tomatoes and salt over the eggs in the pan. “They can’t do that-“

 

“They have and they still do just that. Every time it comes down to me just wanting to return to school and just be a regular kid or get dropped into the center of the latest terrorist scheme to save M16’s ass, they pull their trump card,” Alex said with a resigned sigh. He leaned back in his chair. “So you reporting back to Blunt on when I’m fit for duty again and they can send me back out?”

 

Wolf frowned. “I told you kid, we’re on your side in this. There is no grand conspiracy here. You needed someplace to stay with someone who had some medical knowledge and I figured this was better than the hospital. If I had my way on this, and I will be having words with Blunt, that was your last hoorah, pack your bags and get back to school.”

 

“Stop treating me like some kid, I’m not stupid Wolf. You treated me like a kid back during training too, refused me a gun. I’ve killed men with far fewer tools just fine. There is no ‘get out of jail free card.’ They will send me back in. Besides, I may as well do what I’m good at right? And that appears to be tripping my way through terrorist plots and barely getting out alive. It’s kind of hard to bring that into casual conversation over lunch at school, it’s a bit different than the experience most people my age are having.”

 

“That doesn’t make it right.”

 

“It’s being realistic. I’ve learned a hearty dose of realistic expectations will get you a lot further in this game than wishes and pipedreams.”

 

“You’re painting everything in black and white, there are shades-“

 

“Bullshit. Alan Blunt was perfectly black and white on my mission briefing. If I got caught, I was as good as dead because M16 wasn’t sending anyone in after me. Couldn’t risk having some higher-ups ih the terrorist organization drawing some connections and realizing that M16 was on their trail before they stopped the sale of some Cold War missiles they were trying to get their hands on. I’m a’ liquefiable asset’ is the way our esteemed employer put it, same as you.”

 

“So when you were trying to strangle that guy when we came in…” Wolf trailed off, prompting Alex to fill in the blanks.

 

“Well, I figured that if I died trying to get out, it was probably a better fate than whatever they had in store.”

 

“Gambling with your life is not a game, Cub,” Wolf retorted.

 

“I weighed the risks and deemed them acceptable,” Alex said.

 

It chilled Wolf to the core to see Alex make comments like that, to view his life in terms of what benefit M16 could draw from it and what it would cost him if he were captured or killed. He didn’t like the tone of this conversation one bit. It was time to steer it in another direction. “How’s your head?”

 

Alex shrugged. “It’s fine.”

 

“Now how about you tell me how it really is. I’ve had concussions Cub, I know what they are like.”

 

Alex rubbed the back of his head, fingers pausing over the large goose egg that had formed there. “Fine as long as the shades are down, I don’t make any sudden movements, and there are no loud noises.”

 

Wolf noted that Alex didn’t question the change of topic. They had wandered into a sensitive area, an open wound that this latest mission had rubbed raw, and perhaps he too was ready to move onto other things.

 

Wolf dished up the food onto two plates, steam rising from the eggs. “So it’s still bothering you? You think you can eat?”

 

“I can try. It smells better than the stuff they were trying to pass off as food in the hospital.”

 

****

An evening of heavy reading later, Wolf had a better idea of what they were dealing with. They all had the repertoire of skills that their training at Brecon Beacons and years of service in the SAS had taught them. Then there were the skills they learned on their own time, the skills that might someday be the one thing that kept them alive. In this case, Snake’s hacking skills had gotten him a manila folder full of reading, Alex’s file from M16. What he had found inside had set his nostrils to flaring and blood to boil. No wonder the Cub assumed that he was alive as long as he was useful and to be discarded like a broken tool when they were done.

 

It had been Fox who did the tracking for them. His comrade had a network of sources throughout the city, the type who kept their ears open and eyes alert and reported back their findings. Not all strictly legal of course, the best associates were often in that grey area between legal and illegal. If it produced results and didn’t endanger their country, K-Unit didn’t care.

 

It was a high end restaurant, much flashier that he would’ve expected for any employee of M16. As a spy, you were taught that most innocuous looking meeting spots worked the best. Keep your head low and your eyes down and you might make it to see the next sunrise. For this evening, he had found need of the tux that hung in the back of his closet. It was a little snug over his biceps, his frame having apparently filled out from training and missions since the last time he had called upon this particular ensemble.

 

A host led him on a winding path through the restaurant, white-draped tables and velvet-backed chairs causing such detours to be necessary. Wolf spotted the two of them before they spotted him. It was what he was paid for.

 

Mrs. Jones and Alan Blunt were dressed in all of their finery. Blunt abandoning his drab grey wardrobe for a midnight black tux, Mrs. Jones sporting a deep red dress. No cleavage, mind you, that would be too much for the conservative woman. Her hair had been let down and swept into a waterfall of curls for the evening’s outing. They were seated with their backs to the wall, something that allowed them to survey anyone who might approach their table if they were paying attention (they weren’t). At least they subscribed to some of the gospel they preached in training.

 

Without being asked, Wolf pulled out a chair and dropped into it without pomp or circumstance. “I’ll admit, this was probably the last place I would’ve looked for the pair of you.”

 

The edge of Blunt’s mouth curved into a slight frown, just barely noticeable, before a stoic expression settled back over his face. “How nice of you to join us, Wolf. I didn’t realize that you had made the invite list for this particular outing.”

 

“Because it most certainly looks like you two are on official business tonight,” Wolf huffed.

 

“Celebrating our latest victory on the prime minister’s dime. He was most pleased with the success of our latest mission.”

 

“You mean the one that almost had the Cub killed and currently has him laid up in a safe house healing from the injuries you allowed to happen?”

 

“You speak as if we were the ones who laid a hand on him, the fist that beat him or the arms that held him as they did so. He was warned of the risks that mission entailed, he chose to ignore them.”

 

Wolf growled. “That’s not the way I heard it.”

 

“Then you obviously heard wrong,” Blunt retorted.

 

“You told me it was one mission, Blunt,” Wolf growled. “I trained that kid on the assurance that he would have a minor role in one mission.”

 

“It might’ve been that if he hadn’t performed so well. He’s quickly gaining a reputation throughout the world for his prowess. It reflects well on M16,” Blunt said casually between sips of wine.

 

“You mean you’ve leant him out to the CIA and pretty much every other intelligence network that’s come knocking.”

 

Blunt’s eyes narrowed. Wolf knew more than he should. The man wasn’t going to give Wolf the victory by asking where that information had come from. “Making friends in this business tends to be a good idea with the types of worldwide terrorist organizations we’re dealing with these days.”

 

“Wage whatever damn war you want. You pick the target, and I’ll get rid of them, it’s always been that way. But you crossed a line here Blunt, a kid doesn’t belong in this.”

 

“He might’ve been a kid once but he’s not anymore Wolf. If you know about the CIA work you know what he’s done for this country, you know his hands aren’t bloodless.”

 

“And you’re to blame,” Wolf spoke in a dangerously low tone, every muscle taut, vibrating with tension. “They might’ve tortured the Cub in there. Somehow I don’t think you even care.”

 

Blunt put his wine glass back on the table, smoothing a wrinkle out of the tablecloth with practiced fingers. “That’s because I don’t.”

 

Mrs. Jones finally interjected there. “We do care-“

 

Blunt shot her a pitying look. As if she was a kid trying to believe in some fairytale. “We don’t. He’s a tool in our arsenal like any other. Risks are sometimes necessary in our line of work, someone has to stick their neck out and stand on the front lines between us and them. He signed up for this.”

 

“No, he didn’t, Blunt. I signed on for this. You coerced and blackmailed a fifteen year old into doing your bidding.”

 

“And I will continue to do so without guilt on my conscious, Wolf. That’s what I get paid to do, make the difficult decisions. That doesn’t change just because you come in here and start whining about it like a spoiled puppy.”

 

“I won’t take part in an organization that does this. I’ll walk away, there are plenty of places in the world seeking to employ someone with my unique skill set.”

 

“Pity they’d rot away on the inside of a jail cell. M16, the SAS, it isn’t something you just walk away from. You made a promise to your country.”

 

“It wasn’t a country that put kids in places where they get water boarded and burnt, shot at, and interrogated.”

 

“It might not have been back then, but the face of this world, of this fight, has changed. You won’t walk Wolf, you can’t. If you try, it’ll be some cell that will make the one you pulled Alex out of look like a five star hotel.”

 

“I don’t take well to threats,” Wolf snapped.

 

“I don’t make them lightly,” Blunt replied, the two locking glares like stags facing off.

 

Blunt spoke vile things, but they rang with truth none-the-less. This work was for life. You worked until you either couldn’t stand up to the rigors or you turned up in a shallow grave somewhere. No amount of posturing, threats, or complaints on his part was going to change that. He’d hunted down members of their own organization that had gone rogue before. Forgiveness often came in the form of a bullet to the back of the head.

 

“I want the kid,” Wolf said.

 

“You have him stashed in a safe house somewhere unless your lackluster babysitting skills have gotten him lost.”

 

“I want Alex for my unit.”

 

Blunt scoffed. “You have four, that’s a full SAS unit.”

 

“I don’t care. You say he’s such a valuable asset. Then give him some back-up. My team goes in as auxiliary support. If you’re sending a Cub into the trenches, you at least give him a chance at surviving the minefield,” Wolf said.

 

“You’re actually serious,” Blunt replied. It was an observation, not a question.

 

“I don’t care if four’s the manual standard. We operated as a unit of five at Brecon and we can do it again.”

 

“If I read the reports correctly I remember bullying running rampant. You treated Alex like a leper.”

 

Wolf frowned. “We viewed him as a kid first, a burden, before we saw him for the value he brings to the team. I want him, Blunt. There are things I know I won’t ask for because they aren’t in your power or your willingness to give. You can sign off on this. So do it. You want me batting for your team, not pulling at my harness like a spooked horse wondering when I can shake you loose.”

 

“I’ll admit, the idea has merits. I’ll think on it,” Blunt said.

 

“No, you commit to doing here and now and that’s that. I want the transfer paperwork done tonight.”

 

There was genuine anger in Blunt’s eyes now. “You come in here, interrupt my dinner, start making demands, and expect them to be fulfilled at the snap of your finger just like that?”

 

Wolf Bristled. “You’re a pragmatic man, Blunt. One who weighs possible victories against the value of a kid’s life, an apparently liquefiable asset. I’m just offering you a way to protect your crown jewel and keep him alive.”

 

Blunt gave the smallest of nods. “Fine. He’s your problem now Wolf; your responsibility. Any failure of his is a failure of yours. You’re willing to take that on?”

 

“In a heartbeat,” Wolf replied.

 

“Okay then, I’ll put in for his transfer,” Blunt stated, pushing a piece of steak onto his fork with his knife.

 

Just like that, Wolf had been summarily dismissed. He departed the restaurant, checking his texts on the way out the door to see if his teammates had anything to report in on Alex. It would read as gibberish to anyone else, but the coded statement from Fox told him that the kid had nodded off on the couch, exhaustion apparently catching up with him.

 

The Cub would heal, their unit would see to that. They’d smooth over the rough edges, seal the cracks that had appeared in the kid’s armor, and see him through each mission as they always did for one another. They were K-Unit, four men and a Cub. They protected their own.

 

The End.


End file.
